Rensselaer Adventures

This blog reports events and interesting tidbits from Rensselaer, Indiana and the surrounding area.

Thursday, August 22, 2013

Ribbon cutting for the new Amtrak depot

The ribbon cutting ceremony for the new Amtrak building took place Tuesday at noon. Mayor Wood was master of ceremonies, and he had the members of the Rensselaer Central High School show choir introduce themselves. They sang three songs, finishing with the National Anthem.
 The main speaker was Marc Maglinai, an Amtrak official from Chicago. He mentioned that Rensselaer has had passenger rail service for 115 years, and that 30 years ago the city asked Amtrak if their trains that were traveling through Rensselaer could stop. Thus began local Amtrak service. He also mentioned that the government has spent a million dollars to build the platform and the depot. However, most of his talk was about why daily Amtrak service is a good thing for a community and should be preserved. The Hoosier State line that runs from Indianapolis to Chicago four days a week will not be able to continue if the State of Indiana does not subsidize it. (Three days a week the Cardinal line stops in Rensselaer. It originates on the East Coast.) After he talked, the official ribbon cutting took place.
 The sun was hot and the ceremony short. Afterwards a light lunch was served in the gas department building. Displayed next to the cake was the picture below, showing the Hosier [sic] Limited stopped at the old station. Based on the car, this photo must have been taken nearly a century ago.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

I remember going to the old station when I was in the 4th grade. We took the Monon passenger train to somewhere north, perhaps Lowell, and then the school bus picked us up and took us back to Newland Grade School in North Barkley Township. This would have been in the fall of 1955 or spring of 1956.